Page 41 of Taming Chaos

Seph didn’t hesitate as she placed her hand in Torin’s palm, and that pleased him a great deal.

He squeezed her fingers and hauled her to her feet, exhaling as the remaining nanites around his wound-site detached and returned to his bloodstream.

After expending so much energy healing that massive wound, they would be starved, and if he didn’t eat something soon, the first thing to go would be Torin’s muscle mass.

He looked one way, then the other, trying to decide where to go.

“This way.” He guided her through the maze of fallen bodies, sidestepping pools of blood and severed limbs.

Seph went quiet. Her skin was a shade paler than usual, and she moved slowly, carefully, making sure her boots didn’t touch the grisly aftermath of Torin’s destruction.

If she was like most ordinary humans he’d encountered, she was probably terrified right now.

Terrified, shocked, disgusted… the grim line of her lips told him as much, and yet she didn’t let go of his hand.

That simple gesture warmed his black heart, and suddenly everything started to make sense. The fall of the Empire. The quiet invasion of Earth. The way even the most vicious Kordolian warriors had turned into fierce protectors.

The General had caught the fever first, and look what he had done. One by one, they were falling, and now Torin was caught too.

Finally.

Secretly, he was ecstatic.

Chapter Ten

Seph breathed a sigh of relief when they turned the corner and left the gruesome corridor behind. The thick, coppery stench of blood hung in the air, making her feel sick.

All the while, Torin’s fingers remained curled around hers, and he gave her the occasional squeeze as he guided her into a passageway that was lined with rough cream colored walls. In his other hand, his long Callidum blade was drawn and ready, a deadly extension of his body.

For some reason, these walls reminded Seph of the rendered stone of old Earth buildings. It was an odd thing to see on a big grimy space vessel, where one would expect everything to be functional and utilitarian. Etched into the walls were strange words in jagged Bartharran script, along with various colored dots and arrows. At the far end, metal doors lined the passage. They were all closed.

“Can you read Bartharran?” She glanced at him, genuinely curious. Torin seemed to know quite a bit about Bartharran culture. Were all Kordolians as well educated about the Greater Universe, or was Torin just… different?

“Nope. I can speak a few words, but I haven’t learned their script. You?”

“It isn’t exactly a high-value language. We don’t have much to do with Bartharrans at all, and most of us speak Universal anyway, so the more obscure alien languages aren’t commonly studied.” A thought occurred to her. “If you Kordolians are the all-powerful creators of the Universal tongue, why do you know how to speak Ephrenian… and English?”

“Language is culture,” Torin explained. “Learning a race’s native tongue helps me to understand certain… quirks. Take English, for example. You borrow words from everywhere, grammatical rules are frequently contradicted, and some tenses make absolutely no sense, just because. And those irregular things…” He shook his head in exasperation. “It is one of the most illogical, complicated languages I’ve ever had the pleasure of studying. A perfect mirror for the nature of your species.”

“So we’re illogical and contradictory, are we? My former colleagues in Linguistics would have loved you,” Seph said dryly.

“Ah. You are an academic?” The notion seemed to excite him.

“Was. My contract wasn’t renewed this year.”

“Why would anyone let you go? Are they mad?”

“The university didn’t exactly agree with my worldview.”

“Oh?”

“Not Earth-centric enough. They didn’t like me teaching things that were outside the curriculum, and apparently, I mark too hard.” And I have a bad temper… and sometimes I punish the students too hard when they turn up to lectures late.

“You don’t make concessions.”

“Only for you, Kordolian.” She didn’t know why that absurd statement slipped out of her mouth. Perhaps it was because she was starting to feel more and more relaxed around him. Sometimes, it felt like they’d known each other for ages.

Torin laughed. “But that’s because you don’t have a choice, no?”

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